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I sent a story to The Weekly News on 20th July. I got a failed delivery notice in response to my e-mail, so I sent it again to Jill's home e-mail. As I received no response I wasn't even sure she got it. Image my surprise (and delight) when I picked up this week's TWN and found my story in it!!!!!
I still haven't heard from Jill that it's been accepted although I have e-mailed her again today. I'm still in shock.
Comments
Hurray for Casey.
I have e-mailed to ask the same question (put more tactfully I hope) :-)
... sure - just amazed this can happen!
Me too
I've had the same thing happen to me - three times (twice with TWN) I got paid each time.
Oooh, well that sunds more hopeful, hooray!
That doesn't mean Casey was extra lucky to have it used (as they wouldn't pick something they considered sub standard) just lucky to have it appear so soon.
I felt lucky seeing it anyway. It was only by chance that I looked in the Weekly News. I was in W H Smith's for a competely different reason and, seeing the paper thought I would just look to see who was in this week (nosy cow that I am). I could hardly believe it when I found it was me.
So you didn't just say "Gimme!"?
Not yet - but there is time...
I hope you stood at the till with the page folded back and held the mag as head height to make the real you and your photo more easy to compare? Or, you could have waited at the Weekly News pile, pen in hand, and offered autographs to potential customers.
Well done!
[quote=Tiny Nell]I hope you stood at the till with the page folded back [/quote]
Actually I bought two copies and the check-out girl thought I'd picked up two by mistake and had only charged for one. Of course I had to explain to her the reason I'd bought two. I also had to show it everyone at the gym when they asked why I was sitting in the changing room reading the newspaper. Got a buzz though.
It does seem strange that magazines don't have at least an automatic email set up to notify their authors - as you've shown, it guarantees a few extra sales and promotion on sites like this. If you hadn't happened to pick up the magazine, you wouldn't have known about it until it was gone from the shops, potentially.
This seems to happen quite a lot with the Weekly News - it's happened to me twice (not recently unfortunately!!). They are also particularly bad at returning stories. Although Jill always says she's sent emails out they rarely seem to arrive.
On another forum I 'attend' we have a Weekly-News-story-spotter who lists each week's authors so that we don't miss our stories. I'll try to let you know if I spot any of you there, in case you didn't know (unless people would rather I didn't.) I did see your name casey, but as I was on holiday you already knew by the time I did!
I would hate to not say anything to someone and they missed their story being in print.